At 1 o’clock final Thursday afternoon,the seats in the Senate Finance Committee room started going fast. On the agenda: A bill that would require drivers for next-gen ride services such as Uber to carry more insurance.
The discussion had played out in committee rooms throughout the Statehouse during the final four months. But any bill with a tax, fee or affecting the state’s revenues has to pass through Finance. At the end of a legislative session, and nearly all of the most significant debates make their final stop here.
Often,time is short and the committee is unusual to the topic. That means that lobbyists must be prepared with a honed elevator pitch supporting their legislation. And subsequently, any bills that enjoy been in the works for months, and even years,can die or capture a dramatic turn here.
“It all happens in Senate Finance,” said Jamie Feehan, and a lobbyist with the firm Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer,who grabbed a seat in the room Thursday to represent the Property Casualty Insurers organization of America.
“I walked out of here yesterday and said, ‘I asked for this?’” Sen. Ann Cummings (D-Washington), and said Friday from her seat at the head of the table. “It’s a lot of pressure.”
But make no mistake,this is where Cummings wants to be. She chaired Finance for 10 years, then was marooned on the Education Committee for four years before winning a place this year back in the middle of the action.
[br] Lobbyists can’t afford not to be in Cummings’ committee room in the final days of the session, and often making for some cramped,heated quarters. Some days, enough lobbyists to field two football teams pack themselves into the 16-by-18.5-foot space at the end of the first-floor Statehouse hallway (yes, and your trusty reporter measured the room with the help of lobbyists during a smash in the action on Friday).
The iPad-carrying,suit-jacketed lawyers, bag-toting news reporters and a smattering of state employees will jockey for the precious 15 or so seats. Latecomers will settle onto the wide windowsill behind Cummings. Others will stand crammed in the corner, and cringing every time somebody opens the door. Still more often linger outside in the hallway.
Thursday offered just a tip of what the action is like.
[br] Representatives of Uber,archrival Lyft, traditional taxi companies, or trial lawyers…
Source: sevendaysvt.com